by Marcel Duchamp
Let us consider two important factors, the two poles of the creation of
art: the artist on the one hand, and on the other the spectator who
later becomes the posterity.

To all appearances, the artist
acts like a mediumistic being who, from the labyrinth beyond time and
space, seeks his way out to a clearing. If we give the attributes of a
medium to the artist, we must then deny him the state of consciousness
on the esthetic plane about what he is doing or why he is doing it. All
his decisions in the artistic execution of the work rest with pure
intuition and cannot be translated into a self-analysis, spoken or
written, or even thought out.

T.S. Eliot, in his essay on
“Tradition and Individual Talent”, writes: “The more perfect the
artist, the more completely separate in him will be the man who suffers
and the mind which creates; the more perfectly will the mind digest and
transmute the passions which are its material.”

Millions of
artists create; only a few thousands are discussed or accepted by the
spectator and many less again are consecrated by posterity.
In the last analysis, the artist may shout from all the rooftops that
he is a genius: he will have to wait for the verdict of the spectator
in order that his declarations take a social value and that, finally,
posterity includes him in the primers of Artist History.

I
know that this statement will not meet with the approval of many
artists who refuse this mediumistic role and insist on the validity of
their awareness in the creative act – yet, art history has consistently
decided upon the virtues of a work of art through considerations
completely divorced from the rationalized explanations of the artist.
If the artist, as a human being, full of the best intentions toward
himself and the whole world, plays no role at all in the judgment of
his own work, how can one describe the phenomenon which prompts the
spectator to react critically to the work of art? In other words, how
does this reaction come about?

This phenomenon is comparable
to a transference from the artist to the spectator in the form of an
esthetic osmosis taking place through the inert matter, such as
pigment, piano or marble.

But before we go further, I want
to clarify our understanding of the word ‘art’ – to be sure, without
any attempt at a definition.

What I have in mind is that art
may be bad, good or indifferent, but, whatever adjective is used, we
must call it art, and bad art is still art in the same way that a bad
emotion is still an emotion.

Therefore, when I refer to ‘art
coefficient’, it will be understood that I refer not only to great art,
but I am trying to describe the subjective mechanism which produces art
in the raw state – à l’état brut – bad, good or indifferent.
In the creative act, the artist goes from intention to realization
through a chain of totally subjective reactions. His struggle toward
the realization is a series of efforts, pains, satisfaction, refusals,
decisions, which also cannot and must not be fully self-conscious, at
least on the esthetic plane.

The result of this struggle is
a difference between the intention and its realization, a difference
which the artist is not aware of.

Consequently, in the chain
of reactions accompanying the creative act, a link is missing. This
gap, representing the inability of the artist to express fully his
intention, this difference between what he intended to realize and did
realize, is the personal ‘art coefficient’ contained in the work.
In other words, the personal ‘art coefficient’ is like an arithmetical
relation between the unexpressed but intended and the unintentionally
expressed.

To avoid a misunderstanding, we must remember
that this ‘art coefficient’ is a personal expression of art à l’état
brut, that is, still in a raw state, which must be ‘refined’ as pure
sugar from molasses by the spectator; the digit of this coefficient has
no bearing whatsoever on his verdict. The creative act takes another
aspect when the spectator experiences the phenomenon of transmutation:
through the change from inert matter into a work of art, an actual
transubtantiation has taken place, and the role of the spectator is to
determine the weight of the work on the esthetic scale.

All
in all, the creative act is not performed by the artist alone; the
spectator brings the work in contact with the external world by
deciphering and interpreting its inner qualification and thus adds his
contribution to the creative act. This becomes even more obvious when
posterity gives a final verdict and sometimes rehabilitates forgotten
artists.